Reply #26: Birthplace is important in the South

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

I assume the same applies in Texas. "He lives in Texas, but he's from Connecticut" is how they'd put it in South Carolina, Alabama, etc.

I used to work on a newspaper in Tupelo, and since I was a Yankee (until they learned I was born in Montgomery, AL before my Air Force father was assigned to New York), I didn't understand that that fact as I took obituaries over the phone. If you were born in Biloxi but at the age of one your family moved to Tupelo, where you lived the remainder of your life, your obituary would read, "Mr. Johnson, of Biloxi, died Tuesday."

That's why they won't put his birthplace in *'s biography. He would cease being a "Texan", which has a certain John Wayne straight-talking no self-doubt image associated with it, and be seen for what he truly is -- an Easterner who happens to have lived part of his life in Texas.